Preparation and Electrical Properties of Dense Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂ Ceramics by Spark Plasma Sintering

The family of bismuth layer-structured ferroelectrics is attractive from the viewpoint of their application as electronic materials such as dielectrics, piezoelectrics and pyroelectrics. However, during conventional sintering method, high sintering temperature and long sintering time were needed and it is difficult to get BIT ceramic with a density more than 95% of its theoretic value. In the present paper, we produce dense BIT pellet using a spark plasma sintering process. The results show that at a sintering temperature as low as 7000C/5min under a pressure of 25MPa, BIT ceramics with a density about 99% of its theoretic can be produced. The densities, grain size and electrical properties of the resulting ceramic were also investigated.